


try to kill it all away (but i remember everything)

by amosanguis



Series: Tragic OTP Prompts [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Torture, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, OTP: No Not Without You, Psychological Torture, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Suicide, everything hurts and nothing is beautiful, title from a country song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 21:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4035175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amosanguis/pseuds/amosanguis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve dreams as he waits for death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	try to kill it all away (but i remember everything)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Hurt” by Johnny Cash
> 
> Tragic OTP prompt: Your OTP spend their afterlives wandering the earth searching for each other.
> 
> Content warning: brief but multiple uses of a homophobic slur.

-z-

 

James Barnes falls and the angels lift their heads and rush after him.  (But devils beat them to him.)

 

-

 

Three days later, the angel who was supposed to be watching Steve Rogers fucks up.  He turns away, believing his charge will be too wrapped up in his grief to get into trouble, but then he hears: _I’ll see you soon, Buck_.  Then he falls to his knees, screaming. 

(Suicide is one of the gravest sins and there’ll be no protecting Steve from what’s to come.)

 

-x-

 

Steve dreams as he waits for death. 

(He dreams of ice; of waking up in a future filled with flying men in metal suits, demi gods, and a ship designed for both the sea and the sky.)

 

-

 

Steve dreams as he waits for death.

(They tell him that he’s awake, that this is all real and he almost believes them – but then, two years in, Bucky’s back from the dead and he doesn’t know Steve.  Bucky disappears in the cloud of grenade smoke and when Steve sees him next, says, “Don’t make me do this,” says, “You are James—,” the Soldier lifts his gun and puts a bullet between Steve’s eyes.)

 

-

 

Steve dreams as he waits for death.

(Bucky screaming as he is broken into a hundred thousand pieces; Steve screaming beside him.  Because Steve cannot be unmade in the ways that Bucky can – so they disassemble Bucky in front of him, make him watch them cut into Bucky over and over and over.

“You can end this,” they tell Steve, “why won’t you end this?  I thought you loved him?  Is that not why you dove after him?”

It takes them five years to break him; it’s been sixteen since they fell – not that either of them know it.  They just know that the faces change, age.

Finally, the programming takes and Steve and Bucky are released on their first mission as Sergei and Evgeni – their first mission: Howard Stark.

The mission is completed easily and Hydra celebrates and it’s the beginning of the end.)

 

-

 

Steve dreams as he waits for death.

(He dreams of Bucky’s mouth, of his tongue and his teeth and the way he gasps and chokes on the most beautiful and loving words wrapped around Steve’s name.)

 

-x-

 

Bucky dreams.  (But he does not wait for death – he Knows that he is already dead, has Known since dream-Steve punched him in the face and said “I’m not a goddamned faggot” because Steve _was_ a faggot, he was _Bucky’s_ faggot and they were beautiful and happy together – and as soon as Steve denounced all of that, Bucky Knew it wasn’t real.)

(Except that it is real, and this is Hell and it takes Bucky longer than Steve to realize that.)

(“What did I do?” he asks one day.

 _We stole you_ , is the answer he gets from the voices just beyond his vision, _we stole you, oh, precious thing.  There were big plans for you – you were going to save a hero – but we stole you before that could happen.  You are **ours** now and we’ll never give you up_.)

 

-

 

Bucky dreams.  (He dreams of a chair and electricity in his veins and a new language being downloaded into his brain; he dreams of a young girl who reminds him of Rebecca and pulling punches where he could.)

 

-

 

Bucky dreams but does not expect anything else.  (He dreams of a man with blond hair and blue eyes and shooting him once in the gut, twice in the forehead.)  (He dreams of a man with blond hair and blue eyes and shooting him three times in the gut before he drops his shield and says, “I’m not going to fight you.”)

 

-

 

Deep in the Pit, chained and locked away, Bucky listens to the devils around him – how they cackle with glee as they whisper about _Stevie’s_ dreams.

 _He bleeds so pretty_ , they tell him.  _And his screams are the hymns we sing to.  All because he loved you so much, he betrayed his God.  His soul has blackened beautifully and soon – he’ll be entirely ours_.

Bucky screams – he screams Steve’s name, for Steve to keep fighting.

 _He can’t hear you_ , a devil sneers, _your love is powerless here._

Bucky keeps screaming.

 

-x-

 

And up in the ice, Steve twitches and the devils with their gnarled fingers wrapped around his soul gasp before they tighten their hold.

(Steve’s dreams never stop.)

 

-z-

 

End.


End file.
